John Carlos Frey

Like many first films, John Carlos Frey's "The Gatekeeper" has a certain stiffness and awkwardness at the start, but this deeply personal work steadily grows more powerful and eloquent, creating a tragic vision of the plight of illegal aliens that transcends its melodramatic elements.

John Carlos Frey wants you to be angry about the U.S.-Mexico border. He wants you to feel such a deep sense of moral outrage that you'll get out of your chair and write a letter to your congressman. That's why he invited me to the border town of El Centro, to stand in Imperial County's pauper's cemetery, a dusty field dotted with about 900 concrete markers the size of bread loaves. Each was stamped with numbers or the name "John Doe." Several hundred marked the final resting place of Mexican and other Latin American migrants who've died walking across the desert or drowned trying to cross the nearby All-American Canal.

John Carlos Frey wants you to be angry about the U.S.-Mexico border. He wants you to feel such a deep sense of moral outrage that you'll get out of your chair and write a letter to your congressman. That's why he invited me to the border town of El Centro, to stand in Imperial County's pauper's cemetery, a dusty field dotted with about 900 concrete markers the size of bread loaves. Each was stamped with numbers or the name "John Doe." Several hundred marked the final resting place of Mexican and other Latin American migrants who've died walking across the desert or drowned trying to cross the nearby All-American Canal.

Like many first films, John Carlos Frey's "The Gatekeeper" has a certain stiffness and awkwardness at the start, but this deeply personal work steadily grows more powerful and eloquent, creating a tragic vision of the plight of illegal aliens that transcends its melodramatic elements.

Fueled by passion and politics, writer-director-producer-star John Carlos Frey gives "The Gatekeeper" an urgency and sense of purpose not entirely unlike Tom Laughlin's man-alone landmark "Billy Jack." Frey's film concerns a U.S. Border Patrol guard at the California-Mexico border who, fueled by self-loathing regarding his own Mexican American heritage, becomes involved with a militia-like anti-immigration organization.

In 2007, the Bush administration set out to double the size of the U.S. Border Patrol. It was a tall order and called for some creativity, with the Border Patrol even sponsoring its own racing vehicle at NASCAR events as a recruitment tool. Because recruits were hard to find, Border Patrol - part of the Department of Homeland Security - also lowered its standards and training regimens were relaxed. Individuals without a high school diploma could already join the force, but background checks were also deferred.

There are just two weeks left in his presidency, but down in San Diego County the heavy machinery is grinding away at one last grand project from the administration of George W. Bush. As The Times reported Sunday, your tax dollars are paying for contractors to move mountains of earth and make canyons disappear at the U.S.-Mexico border. New fences are rising and a no-man's land is being carved into the Earth.

Praise for firefighters Re "A pair's little victories in Haiti," Column One, Feb. 20 As a Los Angeles firefighter of over 30 years, now retired, I can vouch that this story captured the spirit, the heart and the compassion of all firefighters more than anything I have seen or heard since a survivor at the twin towers remarked that "we were fighting to get out, and the firefighters were fighting to get in." I pray that the citizens and politicians of Los Angeles, in cutting budgets, will not be responsible for quelling these noble qualities in our hero firefighters.